Three months later, Lucy opened the mailbox.
She didn't know how many times she'd done this over the years. It was something she didn't really think about most of the time. Mail was paper. Bills, letters, and junk.
Today, she had an envelope from a laboratory.
There was a part of her that was actually truly afraid to open it, because the past months had been so hard. She'd been so sick, so weak. Cancer was the kind of fight that required a person to give up a lot just to keep going. It was scary, always worrying the next visit would be the one where she heard bad news.
Sometimes Lucy felt like life could be like a good book, but in a book, it would be high time for the children to lose their mother for dramatic effect and for character development.
Lately, she'd felt a lot like writing again because she knew a lot more about how people developed and became who they were. There were five little characters developing in her story and she felt like their growth would be just fine without a big tragedy.
Maybe it was good news, and she'd be able to discontinue treatments, recover, and continue living her life.
Maybe it was bad news, and then life would be one big dark mystery.
She took the letter inside, and put it on the coffee table.
Lex was walking about and exploring the world. He became curious about the letter, took a few steps, and banged his head on the coffee table.
Had he been her first child, she probably would have panicked, but Lex was Number Five and she'd long discovered that if she didn't act like it was a big deal, neither would he.
"Get up, big boy. You're a dragon. You were destined to be hard-headed," she said.
He got up, rubbed his head, and threw his toy at the table in retaliation for it being there in his way. "No!" he shouted at it.
It was late fall, and the smell of leaves wafted in when Laxus came home from lunch, eager to see if the envelope had arrived.
Her husband took a deep breath when he saw it sitting there, unopened.
He would have traded anything and everything for a guarantee that there would be good news. While he knew her journey had obviously been indescribably difficult, it also hard to be a husband to an ill wife. Months of feeling helpless and sometimes angry left him feeling the kind of tired he hadn't known often. He worked hard at the guild and within their family, and when he wasn't busy on one of those, he was trying to look after her.
When he sat next to her on the couch, he decided to ignore his son's apparent anger at the furniture. Lex was a creature almost entirely devoid of logic, yet still seemed intelligent. This made for a somewhat interesting parenting experience.
His wife squeezed his hand. "I love you."
Gently, he leaned down and kissed her. "Love you too. No matter what. We're going to be okay."
"Open it for me," she said, cuddling up to his arm.
He reached out and opened the envelope.
His heart was beating so loud in his ears as he unfolded the paper, because he wanted so desperately for his wife to be well again.
They looked at it, together, and were perfectly still for a minute.
Her clean bill of health fell to the floor as Lucy pounced on her husband and hugged him with near inhuman strength. She wrapped herself around him and did the only thing she felt like doing, which was half-cry, and half-scream out of pure unadulterated joy that they'd somehow made it across this huge valley.
"I love you!" she screamed.
"I love you too," he answered, squeezing her tightly.
"I can be your partner again," she cried.
"You never stopped. You know I can't do anything without you around," he answered.
His eyes were wet, and she kissed his forehead and cupped his face. "You're such a big baby."
"You scared me. I need you. You're my girl," he whispered against her lips.
They kissed again, and again, and again.
It was so good to feel the stress of her illness lift from their shoulders.
From here, Lucy just had to get strong again, and that meant putting weight back, working out, and giving her body some time to get bounce back.
They were so happy—happy to have made it through the ordeal, happy to be together, happy to be tangled up on the couch while their baby spoke baby curses over their coffee table in his own language for daring to defy him.
Lucy fed her pills to the baby since she no longer needed them, and started to make plans for the big, bright future. She knew Laxus had needed her help and felt so inadequate during her ordeal that he had to do so much on his own. He was a good soldier and a wonderful husband and father and guildmaster, but she knew their situation had pushed him to his limits.
When she snuggled up to him, he said, "So, I'm going to give you some time, but in about a month maybe, you owe me that trip to the beach. I'll buy you some sexy lacy things I can tear up later, and some stilettos you can leave on, then you put on that wig."
She bit the bottom of his lip, and then kissed his nose. "You're so cute. I'm going to rock your world. I just need to eat a few pizzas and get some big fake titties."
Laxus looked down at her chest. "You want 'em?"
"It's actually kind of nice not having them, but I know how you are. All tits and ass and 'get over here and let me drill you into the earth,'" she said.
Her husband took her hand. "I don't want you to be cut again. I'm happy with how you are right now, and I think you are too. You don't need to change anything. Just get better."
"I love you," she said, reaching out to cup his cheek.
"I love you more," he answered, turning to kiss her palm gently.
It was one of the happiest moments of their marriage. Of course, it was nothing compared to the joy of having babies and watching them grow, but it meant more than either could possibly describe to have faced such a scary opponent and achieved victory.
They clutched held each other so tightly until a certain toddler weaseled his way between them with his substantial strength as a little dragon.
"You want to go out and eat? Anything you want," he offered.
Lucy nodded. "Are you asking me out on a date?"
"Yes. I usually don't date chicks with kids, but I'll make an exception in this case," he playfully answered.
She smiled and ruffled her son's thick hair. "Your daddy is so silly!"
Lex loved his father and wanted desperately to be like him to the point sometimes he puffed out his chest when he walked because he thought this made him more like Dad. Yet he was still a little baby dragon and little boy dragons were possessive of their mothers and their sisters.
There was a knock on the door and Laxus stood to answer it to find Baby Orga. They hadn't seen him in quite a while, so there had been some talk between Laxus and Lucy that maybe he'd finally become discouraged and given up.
"Is Mavis here?" he asked.
Laxus shook his head. "No. She's at school. Where you should probably be."
"I already took my equivalency exam."
Lucy asked, "Really? You must be really smart!"
Baby Orga was slightly insulted by how surprised she was by this. "Anyway, I just came to see how she's doing."
Lucy was really looking forward to going out on a hot date with her husband and eating like a pig. She loved her kids, but she really wanted to celebrate with her husband. They'd be home in about an hour, and so she suddenly had an idea.
"Orga, could you watch Lex for an hour? I know you and Mavis have watched him before. She'll be home in an hour. You're reasonably responsible and he's nearly indestructible. You two will be fine for an hour."
Orga shrugged. "Sure. I'll try to keep him out trouble. I babysit for Master Sting sometimes."
"Be careful. He's been uhh…biting lately. Make yourself at home. You can grab something to eat if you just came into town," Lucy said.
Lucy and Laxus went upstairs to change, and while they did, Orga made a sandwich in the kitchen while being stared down by a fierce-looking toddler. Lex was dragging a stuffed dinosaur toy, but had murder in his eyes as he didn't have a clear understanding of who Orga was or why he was acting like he lived there.
Since Orga hadn't come around in quite a while, Lex had no active knowledge of him.
Orga was a nice kid though, and so he cut a bite off the soft sandwich and offered it to Lex, who bit down hard on his finger to get it. "Ow!"
Once it was in his mouth, Lex, stuck his tongue out and let it fall on the floor.
"Okay, little guy. Whatever you say. Let's be friends, okay?"
"No!"
Laxus and Lucy were gone by the time the other kids came home from school, but they'd left a note for them explaining the cause for the celebration, so the kids had their own mini-celebration, complete with cheering and relief and baking a cake together in the kitchen for their mother for when she came home.
Mavis was happy to see Orga, although she pretended she wasn't.
She was a complicated creature, stuck somewhere between her tough personality and traits that seemed to be in conflict with it. She was a tomboy, but she was really girly around her baby brother, and about keeping her hair long, and sometimes she blushed really hard around him and he loved when he could make her do that even though she always pretended she hated it.
Iggy and Petri came over, because that was just the thing to do on a boring weeknight. They along with Yuri were all still healing from bruises and cuts incurred during a job over the weekend. The job itself had been fine, but on the way home they ran into some creature in the forest and Petri, being a risk-loving adrenaline junkie, convinced them to wake it up to see if it was as strong as it looked.
It beat the crap out of them and then went back to sleep, leaving them to limp home. When they got home and had to explain to their guildmaster how they ended up beaten to hell, Laxus just stared at them, called them idiots and rolled his eyes.
This caused them to lose the all-important game that had been borne out of how naturally competitive Petri and Layla were. Yuri, Petri, and Iggy had been going on jobs at the same time as Layla, Anna, and Mavis, effectively pitting the girls against the boys.
For the past six weeks, their schedules were predictable:
On Tuesday, they'd all be standing at the jobs board, trying to find a suitable weekend task. It was a highly secretive process that led to meetings in Layla's bedroom and Iggy's treehouse. They plotted, they planned, they made arrangements and snuck around to try and keep the other team from ever finding out which job they were taking.
By Thursday, they had train tickets and a plan.
On Friday, Mavis and Iggy raced each other to the guild before school started to claim their job just in case they had their eyes on the same job, and after school, the two teams would depart, only to show up again late Sunday or in the early hours of Monday.
Monday night was the night of reckoning, and the losing team had to buy dinner at an expensive restaurant for the whole group.
The boys tended to lose because they were more likely to get themselves into trouble on the way to or from the job. They didn't seem to mind taking the girls out and paying for it, and the girls had no complaints either.
Then on Tuesday, the cycle would start up again.
They were working hard, achieving great focus, and growing really fast as each week meant they'd complete the best job they could possibly squeeze into the weekend.
This also meant during the week that they were trying to gain intel from the other team, which made their young romances a lot more interesting.
Orga was a little envious of the process, but the Dreyars always seemed to be doing something fun.
Once the kids finished decorating the cake, he tried to talk Mavis into showing him her room. She reluctantly agreed, but just as they were going upstairs, Lex called for his sister.
"Maviiiii!"
Mavis picked him and his dinosaur up. "He's a brat, right?"
"Runs in the family?" Orga teased.
They went upstairs, and Mavis showed Orga her room, sitting on the edge of the bed with him.
"So this is where you sleep," he said as he looked around.
"Yes, you could not talk about it like you just found a cave with a monster in it," she crossly answered.
Orga teased, "It kind of is."
She just looked so damn cute to him he couldn't help himself and he reached out and tried to tickle her and was amazed when she, the oh-so-serious, terrifying Mavis Dreyar broke out into little girl giggles.
He kicked his shoes off when she hit him with the pillow and threatened to kill him and then Orga proceeded to attempt to tickle her half to death.
The fun and games ended with a high-pitched, pained shriek when Orga's bare foot and ankle hung off the bed in close enough proximity to Lex the boy simply reached out, grabbed it, and sunk all five of his teeth in Orga's foot, fangs dripping with poison.
Baby Orga flipped off the other side of the bed and clutched his foot tightly.
"Owwwwww! Motherfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffugh," he hissed through his teeth, trying to catch himself from being too vulgar in front of Mavis and the baby. "He bit me…what…why does it burn?"
Mavis looked over at his ankle, which was bleeding and had purple foam around the tiny little punctures. And then she looked over at the toddler on the other side of the bed, who was clutching his dinosaur with a decidedly pissed off expression.
Lex was obviously angry, that much was quite clear. What was not clear was whether he'd somehow misinterpreted the boy rolling around with his sister while she said, 'no, stop,' or if he was simply just being a little jerk of a toddler, angry his sister left him on the floor to roll to laugh and play with another male.
The girl decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Sorry, he has a little uhh…problem. I'll get you a bandage and we'll just hope your foot doesn't rot off. I mean, c'mon. He has five teeth, stop whining already."
Orga was a tough kid by anyone's estimation, but the poison burn left him panting through gnashed teeth. "My skin is melting off, Mavi!"
"And crying about it helps how?" she asked.
He sat back up on the edge of the bed and tried not to wince or curse while Mavis cleaned the foamy purple venom from his tiny little acid-burned wounds and then wrapped a bandage around his foot.
Mavis put Lex on the bed and said, "It was probably just a misunderstanding."
"He hates me."
"Does not."
And then Lex crawled over and started leaning on Orga.
"Mavi, he's trying to push me out of the bed."
Mavis gave Lex a pat on the head. "Let's be nice, okay?"
"Nooo!"
"You want him to go away?"
Lex nodded.
Orga sighed deeply, because he really just wanted some quality time with his beloved. Mavis was dangerous all by herself, but he also had to look out for her brothers, big and little. He believed the baby was probably the most worthy of his fear at the moment.
They eventually took Lex next door to Petri and Layla, who were reading magic books.
Orga stared in disbelief as Petri held up his hand and Lex gave him a high five.
"Little Dude! What's up?" Petri said, going over to his bag for a paper bag tightly wrapped. He tore it open, and Lex gave him another high five and took Petri's offering, a wild-looking vine.
Orga glared. "What?! Why doesn't he bite you?"
Petri said, "Poison ivy. You got to be nice to this kid. He's a crazy little dude."
Layla answered, "You better hope he doesn't get that anywhere in my room. I wake up with a poison ivy rash and I'll teach you what crazy is."
"It's cute when you're angry," Petri playfully answered.
Anna entered the room with an unamused expression to grab a book off her shelf. "Go ahead, Petri. Make her angry. You'll never come out from under your bed after she gets finished with you. The last guy that got on her nerves left town and assumed a new identity."
She looked down at Orga's foot, and looked down at Lex as he sat on the floor with his vine. "Did you bite?"
Lex nodded.
"That's bad! Biting is bad, Lex!"
Anna was stern as she fussed at him, and he looked up at her with an expression that suggested he knew well why he was getting it as he sat there sucking on a mouthful of leaves. He was unrepentant, and they all knew it.
From the view of the young men, Lex was a menace, but the girls weren't surprised because in Lex's mind, Lex was a menace too—that much was quite clear.
He'd bitten all of the boyfriends, but Orga was the only one to get a poisonous bite.
They put Lex on the bed and attempted to teach him about why he shouldn't bite, and the boys stood in the there and watched while they surrounded him and gave him their complete attention.
He looked up at them, as if to gloat in his success.
Yuri heard the fuss and came to claim his brother. "C'mon, little guy. You're not big enough to cause this much trouble. You can hang out with me. We're both single guys. No girls want to be with us, sorry."
He took his troublemaking brother off to his room so his sisters could have some peace and quiet even though he knew his father purposefully used Lex to distract his sisters from their boyfriends. Who could ruin a moment better than a biting, attention-whoring toddler? No one.
Mavis and Orga went back to Mavis' room, and the girl shut the door and plopped back down on the bed.
"Anyway, why do you keep coming around? I'm not really nice to you," she said.
He sat down on the other side of the bed. "I think you're a really amazing girl. You're really smart and cool, and you don't take crap from anybody. Plus, you're so pretty. I like your hair, and your eyes, and that look on your face when you're pissed off at me."
There was a part of Mavis that absolutely hated how he could compliment her looks and she couldn't help but blush. Badass or no, when a cute boy told her she was pretty, she felt her cheeks sting.
Orga smiled at her. "You know, my family's not from Fiore. I have family on one of the southern islands, Komaku. There's a volcano there. We come from a tribe of really wild people."
"Really? I always knew you weren't civilized."
Orga shrugged. "Anyway, in our culture, the women that are considered the best are the ones who are strongest. Like, on the island the women have to be good at throwing harpoons, hunting, rock and tree climbing, fighting, stuff like that. The best women are the fiercest warriors."
"That's pretty cool."
"Right? My dad and I were visiting, so that's why I wasn't around. Next year I become a man and get my tattoos."
(Mavis already knew this because maybe she'd happened to stop by Sabertooth on one of their jobs to find out why she hadn't seen him. She would deny to the end of the earth she had been concerned he'd been injured or simply lost interest.)
He flexed his muscles, and she rolled her eyes.
She felt dreadfully conflicted, torn between wanting to throw him out of the bed and bite him herself and wanting to snuggle a little closer. Or maybe she'd throw him off the bed, bite him, and then snuggle—that was normal, right? Indignation and hormones pumped through her in nearly equal measure, but the latter eventually won and she moved over, and then moved over a little more.
Orga was still at first, because trying to romance Mavis Dreyar was like trying to tame a wild animal. She would either take it well or attack him, and he knew better than to make any suddenly moves.
When she got close enough, he raised his arm and gently put it around her.
"Can I kiss you?" he asked.
"If you promise not to tell."
"I promise."
Their lips came closer, and closer, and met oh-so-gently.
Mavis didn't want to be that girl looking starry-eyed at a boy, but she was and she decided maybe it was okay. But if anyone caught her like this, she had a mind to fervently deny her feelings. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and she liked that. It was fun to make someone's heart race, rather be it from fear or this.
She really didn't know how long they stayed like that—it felt so right and good and her heart pounded too.
The door suddenly opened and Mavis realized she'd been paying so much attention to the rhythm of Orga's heart that her sharp senses missed the sound of the biggest of all the dragons making his way down the hall.
Laxus opened the door and found Mavis snuggled up with her hand on Orga's face, lips on his.
He scowled.
Mavis pushed Orga away. "Get away!"
Her father's brow rose at how his daughter was obviously the aggressor in this exchange yet she was telling him to get away from her. "Really, Mavis?"
Laxus said, "Orga, you're going to miss the last train headed home. I would really like you to be on it, if I have to drag you there myself."
"I was going to stay the night, then I'm headed east. There's a place I can rent a room on Broom St."
Laxus sighed. "You can stay for free here if you can keep my daughter out of your bed. I have an extra bedroom."
"DAD!"
With that, she pushed Orga onto the floor. "It's not what it looks like! Anyway, who cares! Mom's back!"
The kids bounded downstairs with hugs to serve their mother cake and ice cream.
Yuri and Lex came back from buying flowers for her.
The house was full like always, so the atmosphere was lively, noisy, and happy. Lucy was delighted by the little reception, and the cake. With that many people around, sometimes their home seemed like a big party all the time, and she was quite all right with that.
Sometimes, she could remember being lonely, but those memories had faded over the years.
Lucy felt like she was on top again. Or, at least she was poised to get back to the best things in life, her family and her guild and her wonderful husband. She couldn't help but hug on his arm and keep him as close as possible. He was just fine with that, because right next to her was the only place he wanted to be anyway. They'd been together too long, lived too much of their lives together, and could not be separated.
Yuri and Lex came back from buying her flowers, and Lex was holding the bouquet with an iris petal hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Lucy took the flowers while Anna got her a vase with water. "Oh, my boys are so good to me! Who wants Mama kisses?" she asked as she tucked the flowers into the vase.
Lex stretched his arms out. "Me!"
"Were you a good boy?"
He nodded.
And Lucy heard literally everyone else in the room sigh simultaneously. Lex may have been adopted, but he was the undisputed favorite and his parents spoiled him because they were a little older and a little softer.
She pulled Yuri down by the collar so she could reach and kissed him on the cheek. "I love both my baby boys. So handsome and sweeeeet! And my baby girls, oh, you're all getting so big, so wonderful and strong. You picked some good boyfriends too."
She pinched Iggy's cheek. "You look like your Daddy. So handsome. I almost want to cry sometimes when I think about how much you've all grown up."
Yuri realized it first while Lucy was gushing over them nearly tearfully as she tore into a big slice of cake.
Their mom was drunk.
Lucy Dreyar was drunk, eating cake, and quite happy with the world.
Wine was his mother's primary enemy when it came to drinking and their father was an enabler. If there was ever anything she wanted to do, he made sure she could. So if Lucy, his wife of seventeen years, wanted to celebrate with a glass of wine or six, that's what they'd do.
Anna realized not long after and looked up to find their father's eyes seemed slightly warmer than normal and a little droopy. She giggled a bit and wondered if someday she and Iggy would be going out drinking and then trying to hide it from their kids.
She and Iggy had been spending a decent amount of time watching his new pink-haired baby sister, Jane. When they weren't doing that, she was learning to fly with Rai the Exceed, who was finally big enough to carry her. And, contrary to what anybody believed, it took a lot of practice and trust for a cat to become ready to fly in a fight.
Iggy wasn't really one to muse about the future very much—Anna wasn't sure if he had the ability to think more than five minutes ahead. She liked that about him, because he wasn't too serious about anything. He had his mother's gentle personality but his father's temper on any occasion that a friend was in trouble.
Anna was just happy to have a special friend like him to spend her time with.
XXX
When Lucy was sleeping off her hangover the next morning, her children were running about in a hurry getting ready for their next job. Mavis left early to grab the job off the wall, and that meant Laxus had to go in before both of them to approve the jobs. Bags were packed, and the kids ran on to school, boys and girls planning on going on their respective jobs right after school was out.
Orga hung around to eat leftover cake with Lucy and Lex for breakfast and went on to catch the train for his own job.
Without being heavily medicated, Lucy felt wonderful by the end of Friday, and then Saturday, and Sunday came around. The cloud of nausea had lifted, and her body felt better just getting plenty of protein and keeping it down.
On Sunday, Laxus had to go to the guild because a new member had joined, and after setting him up in the dorm, putting the guild mark on, and getting to know him just enough, he came back home.
It was quiet, but they were starting to get used to quiet weekends with the older kids running out on jobs each week. When they were gone, he and Lucy just hung out and entertained their youngest son, but he wasn't even in the house.
"Babe, where's the kid?"
Lucy shouted from their bedroom. "He's staying overnight with Gajeel and Levy!"
"Why?" he casually asked as he made his way down the hall to her.
And there she was, sitting on the edge of the bed in black lace. She had on tiny little black panties and no bra, but she had the long, pink-streaked wig on and a somewhat devilish smile.
"Hi."
Laxus smirked. "Hi."
When she'd started taking cancer treatments, her libido had evaporated instantly. She hadn't wanted sex, and he hadn't wanted to have it with her when she didn't really want it. In the beginning, they'd had an issue where she wanted to help him achieve release even if they weren't having sex, but Laxus was nearly incapable of performing if he knew she wasn't into it.
Now that the accursed medication was working its way out of her system, she had a certain look in her eyes he hadn't seen in a long time.
Lucy stood up, walked over to him, and started to unbutton his shirt. "Do you know we haven't had sex in seven months?"
"Yes."
"A lot of things have changed since then. With me. My body. I'm feeling pretty good right now, if you want to try," she said.
She was right; her body was completely different than the last time they'd had sex. They'd fought an entire war since then, but he was more than ready to resume intimate relations with her.
Laxus kissed her on the nose. "Let me shower first. Natsu challenged me to a scrap, and I'm sweaty and I smell like ashes."
"You won?"
"That baby isn't letting him sleep. It was like slapping a zombie around."
He started to undress, throwing his clothes on the floor until he felt her eyes upon him. He picked them up and carried them to the hamper. "Are you sure you're ready?"
"I think. Hurry up though—I'm tired of waiting on you," she teased.
Laxus took a quick shower, feeling excited, and grateful.
Mentally, he cautioned himself to be extremely gentle. He was concerned she'd injure more easily since her body was still weak and because she didn't have much meat on her bones. When he crawled into the bed naked, he left her take the lead.
Lucy kissed him long, and then deeply.
They took their time, relishing every breath, every touch, every whisper.
Laxus still wasn't entirely convinced she was ready to have sex yet, so he kissed down from her lips, then down her neck, then to her scars. He kissed down one of the scars, then down the other one, just to make sure she knew he was completely okay with them.
He continued down further, down her belly to the faded stretch marks and the Caesarian scar she had from her last pregnancy with the twins.
With one smooth move of his mouth, his fangs cut her g-string and he tossed it aside, grinning at her surprised little yelp.
"Could you not tear up my panties?"
"I'll buy you some new ones," he playfully answered, kissing the top of her slit. "Now hush. If you can talk by the time I'm done with you, I've lost my touch."
His wife fisted her hands in his hair when he dragged his fang down one labia and then bit teasingly.
Lucy gasped when his tongue slid past his lips because when it came to this, she was always at his mercy. It was a little-known fact that dragonslayers had absurdly long tongues, but he didn't make use of that until later on. Her husband had a method, and she couldn't get enough of it.
First, he'd kiss her over and over, letting his lips do all the work. Then, he'd lightly incorporate his tongue, flicking it against her clit while she was panting in need. Third, he'd suck on it until she was on the edge, and then he'd keep her there.
She could only compare his strategy of edging her for what felt like an eternity to how a housecat might keep a mouse alive for hours before finally finishing the job. There was a part of him that just loved having her beg for it, and beg she did.
Then he made proper use of his talented, hot tongue until she had an orgasm, at which point she rolled over and closed her legs.
"Get up here, Honey. I want you inside me like I haven't wanted anything in my life," she purred.
He kissed his wife as he moved up, propping himself up on one elbow as he put a hand over hers and squeezed it tightly. With great care, he positioned himself, careful not to rest to much weight on her still fragile body and to be considerate that she hadn't had sex in a long time.
The woman he still regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world wrapped her legs around him and pulled him down.
Laxus eased into her gently, and slowly, and groaned at how incredibly perfect she felt. His movements were careful, and well-measured. He knew they'd have plenty of time for the kind of crazy, hardcore fucking that gave them a houseful of kids and over a decade and a half of fantastic sex, but right now was an occasion for the gentlest lovemaking he was capable of.
He took her up slowly, and then over the edge with him, not wanting to take too long and tire her out or take so little time she wasn't satisfied.
Lucy dug her nails into his back and came at the same time as he did, letting the feeling of his cum heighten her own climax.
Then, they snuggled together and just kissed for an hour.
Finally, she laid against his chest. "That was perfect."
"You're perfect," he said.
"Can we stay like this forever?" she asked.
Laxus nodded. "And ever."
She reached a hand up to his silky silver hair. "I can't imagine what my life would have been like without you. I don't know what I would have done. When I look back, I always know I got the most important things in life right."
"I'm a real lucky bastard. I don't care what happens, as long as you stay here with me."
There was a thud, and the sound of the front door opening.
Lucy looked up at the time. "I guess one of the teams made it home already."
"I hear heels on the floor—it's either the girls or our son is keeping a very weird secret from us."
Lucy giggled and went to get pajamas from her dresser so she could go downstairs and check on her babies. "Anyway, once I'm back to my best, I've decided I want to go on jobs sometimes. With the girls. That just seems like so much fun, and Gramps only asked me to retire because he was worried someone would try to use me against you. I'm really strong now, and if someone wanted to do that, they could just use the kids anyway."
"You want to go on jobs?"
"Yes. You and Lex can have some man time together. Look, that whole cancer thing took a lot of fight. It made my body weaker and I aged more in the past six months than in the last ten years. I know it's going to get better, but honestly, I want to have a few more adventures. Gramps asked me to retire for your sake, but you're a strong guildmaster and you're well-established. I don't think there's any conflict," she said.
Laxus nodded. "Anything you want, Babe. Just be careful. I've heard our girls are quite something when they're on jobs. I can't imagine that's going to get better with their mother going along. Once you make a recovery, I'm more than fine with that. Lex and I will survive."
He followed her down to check on the girls, only to find their job had been profitable, short, and uneventful. They ate snacks, threw their clothes in the wash, took showers, and headed to bed, and their parents followed suit.
Laxus held her while she slept, knowing she really was going to grow old with him, and all in the world seemed perfect again.
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